Floppyhead – Digital Media and Streaming

I finally made the plunge and bought an Epson projector for my basement and built a Windows 7 machine for use as a dedicated media center. First off, the projector looks fantastic. Very happy. Second, I have entered the world of converting blu-rays to MKVs. My initial impression: awesome.

Using a guide from Avsforum.com, I have converted my entire blu-ray library to MKVs using AnyDVD HD, eac3to, and mktools. The video quality is superb and is still 1080p. I have converted all the audio tracks to flac, including TrueHD. Lossless compression!

I installed MediaBrowser on the Windows 7 machine along with the Shark007 codec pack. To my surprise, the whole thing actually worked. No external player, no copy protection, and no crazy sound card just for TrueHD playback.

Using an ATI 4670, the picture looks great and the audio is sent to my Onkyo receiver as LPCM, all over one HDMI cable. 5.1 sound and everything.

I have no idea if this will actually work on an extender but right now I could care less. One thing at a time. Plus I think Divx is working on an MKV solution that will work with extenders.

Now I need to set-up a remote. I got a Harmony 880 that hopefully will do the job. Is this ready for the mainstream? No way. Is it ready for nerds? Absolutely.